Zero Rss

Legal Advocacy Group Accuses Virginia Schools Of Falsifying Ideology Of 911 Terrorists

Authored by Naveen Athrappully via The Epoch Times,

Conservative legal advocacy group America First Legal (AFL) has announced it is investigating the Fairfax County Public Schools school district in Virginia, accusing Fairfax of issuing a teacher's guide that seeks to falsify the ideological underpinnings of the 9/11 attacks.

The guide omits key historical details, while instructing teachers to obfuscate 9/11 facts, AFL said in a Sept. 23 statement.

The guide asks teachers not to associate the attacks with Islam or Muslims and instructs teachers that 9/11 commemoration must focus on lives lost and the people who sacrificed to help others rather than the attackers.

The district's guide was first published by Fox News in late August, with AFL's investigation initiated after the news coverage, the group said.

"Do not focus a commemorative learning experience about 9/11 on an examination of Islam," the guide states.

"Teachers who decide to take a deep dive into world religions as part of their 9/11 lesson unintentionally send the harmful message that Islam, or all Muslims, are responsible for these terrorist attacks."

The guide asks teachers to "intentionally include" Muslim Americans among the victims, helpers, and heroes when teaching about the event, according to the guide.

In addition, teachers are recommended to "intentionally disrupt" any implicit associations between "Muslim," "outsider," and "terrorist" in the national discourse.

When discussing the incident, teachers must make it clear that the Sept. 11 attacks were carried out by the al-Qaeda terrorist group, whose actions "should not be attributed" to Islam, according to the guide.

The guide raised concerns that teaching about 9/11 without careful consideration can lead to stigmatizing Islam and encouraging acts of racism against Muslim and Middle Eastern students and those perceived to belong to these groups.

On Sept. 15, AFL sent a letter to Fairfax County Public Schools, seeking records under the Virginia Freedom of Information Act.

Some of the records requested in the letter include the complete and current version of the guide document; information about authors, reviewers, editors, and approving officials; and all communications concerning the guide.

"Fairfax County Public Schools is attempting to sanitize history and erase the radical Islamic terrorism that struck our nation on September 11, 2001," Will Scolinos, counsel at America First Legal, said in the statement.

"Those unforgettable attacks are a national tragedy, with effects far exceeding 'Islamophobia.' Parents and the public must have full transparency regarding who is responsible for stripping truth from our children's classrooms. AFL will continue to investigate and hold public school officials accountable," Scolinos said.

School's Response

In a statement given to Fox News, Fairfax County Public Schools (FCPS) said the institution has a "deeply personal connection" to the 9/11 incident because of its "proximity to the Pentagon and the many military-connected families we serve."

"On the 25th anniversary of the terrorist attacks, we remember the nearly 3,000 people who were killed, including 184 at the Pentagon. We remember the victims, their families, the survivors, and everyone whose lives were forever changed. We honor the first responders whose courage and sacrifice continue to inspire us," the school district said.

"FCPS remains committed to creating an inclusive environment in our schools where all students feel welcome and respected as we strive to provide a world-class education and workplace."

In a superintendent's message published by the school district on Sept. 11, it said that FCPS teaches events that occured on 9/11 based on the Virginia Standards of Learning for U.S. history.

In middle school U.S. History, the school district teaches how the attacks affected domestic policy, global perspectives on the war against terror and the heroic sacrifice of the passengers of Flight 93. Meanwhile, in high school Virginia and U.S. History, students are required to analyze the attacks within the broader context of terrorism and democracy.

The Epoch Times reached out to Fairfax County Public Schools for comment but did not receive a response by publication time.

Tyler Durden Sat, 09/26/2026 - 15:10

Larry Ellison Pledges $9 Billion More In Oracle Stock To Fund Warner Bros Deal As Price Tumbles, CDS Hits Record

Two weeks after the Larry Ellison inexplicably pulled his plan to sell up to 50 million shares, worth about $7.5 billion news of which had sent the stock sliding the day prior, the Oracle CEO - the key figure behind Paramount Skydance’s deal to buy Warner Bros. Discovery - has pledged 67 million more shares of Oracle as collateral for personal loans than he had at the same time last year, approximately 350 million shares.

The shares pledged, revealed in an Oracle Schedule 14A filing on Friday, amount to a 19% increase in the number of shares Ellison has pledged since 2025. The stock is worth about $9.2 billion at Oracle’s closing price of $137.10 on Friday.

As Bloomberg notes, Ellison has been helping his son David’s company, Paramount, acquire Warner Bros. in a transaction valued at $111 billion. The Ellisons have committed to $47 billion in equity funding for that deal, about $24 billion of which is coming from three Middle Eastern sovereign wealth funds, and much of the rest now appears to be sourced from pledge ORCL shares. 

Paramount is also looking to raise debt financing.

Having negotiated a settlement earlier this week with 12 state attorneys general and the Writers Guild trade union who had sued to block the merger, Paramount is now just one step away from sealing its deal for Warner Bros.

While Oracle officers and directors are forbidden from pledging company shares as collateral for personal loans, there is one exception: Larry Ellison - who serves as the company’s executive chair and chief technology officer.

The total stock pledged now represents about 36% of Ellison’s total holdings of 1.16 billion shares; in dollar terms that amount to just over $57 billion in ORCL stock pledged. 

The regulatory filing also disclosed that Oracle’s co-chief executive officers will receive $870 million in combined stock option awards. The package of Clay Magouyrk was valued at $621.7 million, while Mike Sicilia’s was worth $248.7 million. The executives were named to the joint CEO role a year ago, taking the job from Oracle veteran Safra Catz. Ellison, who didn’t receive awards in the previous two fiscal years, got a package valued at $117.8 million.

The 82-year-old technology mogul announced plans earlier this month to sell as much as $7.5 billion in Oracle stock, but then quickly canceled those plans, which may have been the result of the stock price's precipitous drop.

Aside from the Warner Bros. deal, Oracle has been caught up in an escalating data center fiasco, having announced force mejeure on its largest data center in New Meixco, the 2.25GW Project Jupiter complex, which has advised the project developer it will be unable to meet some contractual obligations due to lack of power at the facility as a result of regulatory delays. 

The Force Majeure sent ORCL bond yields surging to a record high, despite a relatively muted reaction in the stock - which nonetheless trades near 52 week lows...

Oracle Bonds Plunge To Record Low As $30 Billion CapEx In Peril On Data Center Turmoil https://t.co/ZuAwlgIWyO

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) September 25, 2026

... and will likely trade even lower once it notices that ORCL CDS have also just hit a new record wide, as the company's default risk has never been higher

As such, one wonders at what stock prices does ORCL get a margin call and is forced to source liquidity, potentially leading to a collapse in the Warner Bros takeover (at a wildely inflated price) as suddenly it finds itself without the funds to do so. 

Tyler Durden Sat, 09/26/2026 - 14:35

Rickards: The Real In AI Is Not 'Super-Intelligence', It's China

Authored by James Rickards via The Daily Reckoning,

It's past time to look beyond the AI hype. The stock valuations of the leading hyperscalers and frontier AI modeling companies are almost certainly in bubble territory. But the market will sort that out in time.

We all know the names of the AI stocks whether from the hardware, software or compute vectors - Apple, Microsoft, Meta, Google (Alphabet), Amazon, OpenAI, Anthropic, NVIDIA and a few others.

Some of these names have valuable core businesses independent of the AI bubble. Others are pure AI plays. All will be hurt to a greater or lesser extent when the AI bubble bursts.

Still, bubbles can get bigger before they pop and they can take far longer to pop than many market participants realize. It's not prudent to short these names but one should definitely lighten up on long positions. Moving portfolio allocations to cash and hard assets is a good way to weather the coming storm.

Valuations aside, these companies now pose serious risks to national security, critical infrastructure, the financial system and other institutions. These risks need to be considered on their own because they will affect all of us.

These dangers are not about stock bubbles. They're about social chaos.

Geopolitical Catalyst

Two threats in particular stand out.

• The first is the use of AI models by the Chinese to attack the United States.

• The second is rogue AI models that work autonomously to attack us on their own.

We've seen continuous headlines about the AI race going on between China and the U.S. The elements of the race include massive data centers, high-powered semiconductors and frontier AI models built by U.S. firms such as Anthropic, OpenAI and xAI and by Chinese firms Baidu, Tencent, DeepSeek and Moonshot AI. Other critical inputs in this race include massive amounts of electricity and water required to run the hardware.

The U.S.-China AI race is usually framed in existential terms. Whichever country gets to superintelligence first will control global AI and possibly the world. Even in less grandiose terms, there are critical outcomes in areas of national security, encryption, digital payments, weapons systems and curing disease that depend on the winner of the AI race.

Yet, the competition is far from fair. The U.S. relies on massive investment in fixed assets, superior technology and access to the fastest semiconductors.

China has some of these tools but they rely more on theft of intellectual property from the U.S., using output from U.S. AI apps as curated input on their own apps (to increase processing speeds) and smuggling advanced chips through third countries. China may not be leading the AI race but they are certainly keeping pace.

AI Recon

Now a new threat has emerged. China is using the most advanced AI models including Claude from Anthropic to process information scraped from a wide variety of open sources in the U.S. including military photographs, ship transponder signals, commercial satellite images and other information combined with Chinese satellite images to determine the exact locations and movements of U.S. naval vessels.

That AI-generated information is then passed to Iran, who use it to fire missiles at U.S. Navy vessels near the Strait of Hormuz and the Arabian Sea.

So far, no U.S. vessels have been hit but that may just be a matter of time. China is using U.S. AI technology to help attack the U.S. Navy at sea. Just days after this revelation, a Chinese spy satellite blew-up in space.

No one has taken responsibility for it. But it's not a stretch to infer that the U.S. used a space-based weapon to destroy the Chinese satellite that was used to help Iran attack the U.S. Navy.

The AI wars are becoming star wars in real time.

Regulatory Capture

As a separate threat, the media is flooded with stories about an AI Apocalypse in which AI apps from frontier developers like OpenAI and Anthropic achieve superintelligence, join forces and take over the world putting humans in the same position relative to the AI systems as apes are to humans. Other versions of this AI dystopia involve gangs of AI apps working together to shut down the power grid, loot banks and brokers and cause chaos in civilized society.

This wave of panicked propaganda began with an essay by Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei. The Amodei essay was amplified by Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon who publicly resigned from Anthropic and issued a warning that AI could "kill all humans" within a decade. The Amodei and Coxon warnings were then taken up by the media, politicians and tech experts in what became a cascade of doom and gloom.

But let's put these warnings in perspective. Whenever you see the same talking points coming from multiple insiders at once, one should be suspicious that a psychological operation (or "psyop") is being conducted to sway public opinion. In this case, the message is that regulation is needed to protect the world against AI going rogue. This regulation would involve government rules, internal compliance departments, auditor inspections, testing and periodic safety certifications.

How convenient for Anthropic and OpenAI. The kind of regulation they envision is extremely expensive. The giant AI developers can afford it but their newer and smaller competitors cannot. Anthropic and OpenAI are planning $1 trillion plus IPOs later this regulatory moat around their franchises to keep out competition with help from the year. The scaremongering about rogue AI could be nothing more than a tactic to build a government-enforced oligopoly.

My own research indicates that superintelligence can never be achieved because it is impossible to program abductive logic (in contrast to inductive and deductive logic) which can be summarized as gut feel or common sense.

Still, AI is powerful and needs guardrails. But it is not as potentially dangerous as the scaremongers insist. Trump was smart to resist calls for more government regulation. The real enemy in the AI world is not superintelligence - it's China.

Tyler Durden Sat, 09/26/2026 - 14:00

A Dollar Is Not A Dollar: A Plea To Make Dollar Policy Great Again

Authored by John Tamny via RealClearMarkets,

Le Diplomate is one of the toughest tables in Washington, DC. When it opened in 2013 its wildly popular Burger Americain (with French fries) set diners back $14, according to the Washington Post. Thirteen years later, the same meal retails for $29. As Tim Carman and Federica Cocca report at the Post, "the wholesale price of ground beef has soared between 18 and 30 percent in the past few years."

Ok, so why the higher ground beef prices, and beef prices in general? As you read this barbecue restaurants in Texas are quite literally removing brisket from the menu so expensive has it become, while a basic "Little Cheeseburger" at Five Guys costs more than $10, without French fries. Costs are soaring for seemingly the simplest of meats.

Carman and Cocca point to "Drought conditions" as the "primary reason for the rise in prices," due to reduced domestic cattle herds. They add that "Domestic cattle shortages mean more beef is arriving from abroad - and it's more expensive, up from $4.96 per pound in June 2025 to $5.59 per pound in June 2026."

The factors Carman and Cocca point to are difficult to lean on as big drivers of soaring beef prices. That's because globalization, or the division of labor, is generally not a cost accelerant.

Moving to the Trump administration, Carman and Cocca report that inside the White House they're yelling at the proverbial scoreboard with antitrust threats lobbed at the major domestic producers of beef, alongside a reduction in tariffs. The first solution is silly, while the second one is a reminder of the illiteracy informing economic policy within the modern GOP. Which brings us to the purpose of this piece.

Not discussed enough is the dollar. Reporters, politicians, and pundits talk endlessly about the prices of market goods, but almost never about the currency in which those market goods are priced. Their blithe countenance about the dollar reveals a major blind spot in their analysis.

That's because per the title of this opinion piece, a dollar isn't a dollar. Instead, the dollar's valuation is a moving target. Very much so.

Consider the WSJ Dollar Index. Since Donald Trump's inauguration in January of 2025, the dollar has fallen 6.3 versus various foreign currencies on the Index.

What about gold? Known for its constancy, the yellow metal's per ounce price doesn't move as much as the currencies measured in terms of gold do. Notable here is that gold is up roughly 63% since Trump's inauguration, and up 205% since 2013 when Le Diplomate charged $14 for a cheeseburger. This is not nothing.

Again, the dollar isn't a dollar in the way that a foot is always 12 inches, the minute 60 seconds, and the pound 16 ounces. Floated in 1971, the dollar has moved up and down since then. Down substantially under Presidents Nixon and Carter, up substantially under Presidents Reagan and Clinton, and then down substantially under Presidents Bush (W.), Obama and Trump. Commodities are very sensitive to the dollar's movements, and reflect them.

Which explains this opinion piece's plea. It's not random that costs from ground beef, to brisket, to gasoline have soared in modern times, rather it's not insignificantly a reflection of a declining dollar.

Cheeseburgers, brisket sandwiches and gallons of gasoline aren't expensive as much as the modern dollar is cheap. President Trump thinks a weak dollar is "great." He's wrong. See Le Diplomate, see Texas barbecue, and see prices at the pump. How about making a stable dollar great again to reverse a price explosion?

John Tamny is editor of RealClearMarkets, President of the Parkview Institute, a senior fellow at the Market Institute, and a senior economic adviser to Applied Finance Advisors (www.appliedfinance.com). His latest book is The Deficit Delusion: Why Everything Left, Right and Supply Side Tell You About the National Debt Is Wrong.

Tyler Durden Sat, 09/26/2026 - 12:50

Nor'easter Hammers East Coast: 62 MPH Gusts Blast Nantucket, High Winds Hit Bethany Beach

Folks in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast are waking up this morning to a power nor'easter with damaging winds, coastal flooding, and heavy rain. 

Coastal wind gusts reached 62 mph on Nantucket, 58 mph in Bethany Beach, Delaware, and 55 mph in Chatham, Massachusetts, according to local weather data. New York's JFK Airport recorded a 53 mph gust. Winds are expected to continue through Sunday. 

"Powerful nor'easter bringing major coastal flooding & damaging winds to the East Coast," NWS Weather Prediction Center wrote on X around lunchtime in New York, adding, "Roads are underwater at the Jersey Shore & gusts hit 64 mph on Nantucket. More flooding likely at high tides tonight & Sun. Turn Around, Don't Drown."

Powerful #noreaster bringing major coastal flooding & damaging winds to the East Coast. Roads are underwater at the Jersey Shore & gusts hit 64 mph on Nantucket. More flooding likely at high tides tonight & Sun. Turn Around, Don't Drown. Reports so far: https://t.co/9LGn1JoXUA pic.twitter.com/L84ZYVj3Rh

— NWS Weather Prediction Center (@NWSWPC) September 26, 2026

Private weather forecasting firm NY NJ PA Weather provided a detailed map of the impacts for the Northeast through the weekend:

A nor'easter will impact the region this morning through Monday evening. Rain has developed along the coast. Rainfall will become widespread by 2 PM this afternoon and begin pushing inland through the evening. Meanwhile, winds will increase from the Northeast to 15 to 30 mph.

The worst conditions will be tomorrow morning, with torrential downpours, wind gusts up to 70 mph on the immediate coast, and visibility below a mile, producing poor travel conditions, power outages, flash flooding, and coastal flooding. Conditions will gradually improve from tomorrow afternoon through Monday afternoon as the storm weakens while lifting towards southern New England.

ZONE 1: Rain 2" -4", Winds 15-30 mph with gusts over 50 mph, high coastal flooding threat.

ZONE 2: Rain 1" -2", Winds 15-30 mph with gusts over 40 mph, high urban/river flooding threat.

ZONE 3: Rain 0." - 1", Winds 15-30 mph with gusts over 30 mph

ZONE 4: Rain 0.10"-0.50", Winds 10-20 mph with gusts under 30 mph

According to the utility tracking website PowerOutage.us, more than 90,000 customers across New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, and Pennsylvania are without power.

Footage:

Flooding again north of Bethany Beach, Delaware on our YouTube Live feed https://t.co/JGDokZlRE0 pic.twitter.com/LjhRUzm2eT

— Jesse Ferrell (@WeatherMatrix) September 26, 2026

Tough situation in Ocean City, Nj. pic.twitter.com/NK8X4VBDtg

— WeatherWatcher (@WeatherWatchin) September 26, 2026

When the Ocean meets the bay in Atlantic City and high tide is still an hour away. When mother nature speaks we have no choice but to listen. 🌊🙌🇺🇸 #AtlanticCityNJ pic.twitter.com/3yoGmDO8BV

— TheMastiffMafia (@mafia_mastiff) September 26, 2026

Crews have rescued several people by boat and high water trucks in Sea Bright, New Jersey. Ocean Avenue has been inundated by coastal flooding from the Shrewsbury River. #njwx #noreaster pic.twitter.com/T4BvqAxQYD

— Bill Wadell (@BillWadell) September 26, 2026

The good news is that no hurricanes have formed in the Atlantic so far this year, with a strengthening El Niño helping suppress hurricane development by increasing wind shear, which makes it harder for storms to organize and intensify.

Tyler Durden Sat, 09/26/2026 - 12:25

"I'm Rejecting Their Deal": Trump Blasts Iranian Proposal Amid Reports He'll Resume Bombing After Midterms

Speaking to reporters Saturday on the White House lawn, President Trump offered his first direct confirmation that he has rejected an Iranian proposal for a seven-day ceasefire and is open to the resumption of attacks on the Islamic Republic, as it still insists on its strict demands for reopening the Strait of Hormuz and ending the war.

The night prior, The Wall Street Journal was the first to report that "President Trump has rejected Iran’s proposal for a seven-day ceasefire and has told aides he expects to resume bombing Iran after the November midterms, U.S. officials said." Here's how the president responded to a reporter's question Saturday morning:

Reporter: Will you strike Iran after the midterms?

Trump: I'm rejecting their deal. They want to make a deal where they open the Strait immediately because they're losing so badly.

They want to make a deal, and I think that's fine. I like making a deal, too, but that deal would… pic.twitter.com/87rKbDySLN

— Clash Report (@clashreport) September 26, 2026

"Well I’m rejecting their deal," Trump responded. While in the fresh verbal interaction he did not explicitly state he plans to resume bombing, he also obviously did not deny the premise of the question (resumption of bombing Iran).

"They want to make a deal where they open the strait immediately because they’re losing so badly," Trump continued. "You know you don’t read that, you don’t see that in the fake news."

"We're winning tremendously. We have total control of the Hormuz Strait, massive amounts of oil are coming out of the Hormuz Strait," he claimed. "Last night we had 29 ships come out. They want to make a deal, and I think that’s fine, I like making a deal, too, but that deal would not be acceptable."

"And what they want to do is immediately open the Hormuz Strait. You know why? Because they’re dying," Trump said. "You know why they’re dying? Because they have no money coming in. Because they get their money from the Hormuz Strait."

He continued: “So they outsmarted themselves. They said, ‘Let’s close it and cause a problem for the world.’ And then I came along and we put up the greatest blockade ever in military history. It’s a wall of steel."

"I would put it up and guess what? They don’t have any money now because they wanted to close the strait. And I said, ‘That’s fine, we’re going to close it on you. But everybody else is able to use it,'" Trump added.

Analysis: President Trump thinks a better deal is just around the corner and he is willing to set the region on fire again in his pursuit of it.

Unfortunately, my pessimism on the U.S.-Iran talks held up.

The technical details of a new understanding were not difficult to hammer out. But the political commitment for peace is lacking.

President Trump thinks a better deal is just around the corner and he is willing to set… https://t.co/bbU5Pp6iim

— Esfandyar Batmanghelidj (@yarbatman) September 26, 2026

For a brief moment there was hope that the warring sides could get back to 'technical talks' based on interactions on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly meeting in New York this past week. Some premature headlines even stated talks at the technical level were already taking place, which the Iranian side was quick to deny.

But at this point that scenario is clearly not going to happen coming out of the UNGA gathering, as President Masoud Pezeshkian has also now flown out of New York and is headed home, state media outlets have indicated.

Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi ⁠previously said, "If the necessary conditions are met, the strait can be reopened, a normal maritime passage restored within seven days. The choice ‌now ⁠rests with the United States." He explained: "The actions that the United States should take ⁠are not new. They are all already in the MoU." Tehran has said all along it would not back off its conditions for ending the war. The FM was said to be waiting in New York for a response before going back to Tehran. Presumably he too will now return to his country.

🔴 US President Donald Trump informed the negotiating team that there is no going back to the memorandum of understanding with Iran, a US source tells Al Arabiya English

🔴 The US source says Trump told his team that the Iranian negotiators are not decision makers

🔴 Trump… pic.twitter.com/Kc2F2P7Bzg

— Al Arabiya English (@AlArabiya_Eng) September 26, 2026

Trump was clearly not satisfied with the Iranian 7-day roadmap after he demanded the "complete dismantling" of Iran's nuclear program as a key condition for any deal. The Iranians have insisted the question of nuclear enrichment can only be discussed after the war is ended, saving the issue for a future time.

What's the next phase or gameplan here from Washington's perspective? Regional analyst and editor of Amwaj.media, Mohammad Ali Shabani, offers the following: "The next phase of the war will likely revolve around destroying Iran's economic infrastructure. The method is collective immiseration until desperate Iranians with nothing to lose will do the regime change." This of course sets the US on a trajectory of yet another 'forever war' in the region.

* * *

Tyler Durden Sat, 09/26/2026 - 12:00

Syria Opens Overland Fuel Transit Route To Iraq Amid Hormuz Closure

Via The Cradle

Syria has begun trucking imported gasoline from its Baniyas Refinery into Iraq, adding a return leg to a route Baghdad has used to export its fuel since the US war on Iran led to the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, a senior Syrian oil official told Reuters on 25 September.

According to Tareq Shallash, who heads the Refining Directorate at the state-owned Syrian Petroleum Company (SPC), the first consignment – roughly 32,800 metric tons of gasoline – arrived aboard the Marshall Islands-flagged tanker Avanti and was pumped into storage at Baniyas before being loaded onto trucks this week.

Source: Reuters

Shallash said 77 tanker trucks have so far set off for the Iraqi border, with loading still in progress and more cargoes on the way.

He stressed that the fuel neither originates in Syria nor comes out of stocks earmarked for domestic consumption.

The shipments move under a transit contract between SPC and Qatar's UCC Holding, which Shallash identified as both the supplier and the firm managing transport.

Iraq's Oil Ministry confirmed the arrangement, with spokesperson Saleem al-Rikabi telling Reuters that “A contract was signed between SOMO and the Qatari company to supply Iraq with improved gasoline through the port of Baniyas by road tankers, and the supplies have in fact been delivered on a regular basis.”

Shallash said the deal is currently restricted to gasoline, though future agreements could open the route to crude, other petroleum products, and additional goods. 

Baghdad has already pledged to keep building overland alternatives through Syria even if Hormuz reopens, and Reuters reported in July that Iraqi fuel oil moved via Baniyas had reached the US for the first time. 

With Iran closing the Strait of Hormuz, Iraq - unable to ship its oil - has opened its borders to Syria. Thousands of fuel-laden tankers are being sent to the world market overland through Syria. Iraq has closed its airports to Iran's planes.

İran'ın Hürmüz'ü kapatmasıyla petrolünü sevk edemeyen Irak'a Suriye kapılarını açtı. Binlerce petrol yüklü tanker kara yoluyla Suriye üzerinden dünya pazarına gönderiliyor.
Irak, İran'ın uçaklarına havaalanlarını kapattı. pic.twitter.com/I4Ub6a749E

— Murat Özer (@muratozer_ist) September 25, 2026

UCC Holding is also part of a consortium with Chevron and TI Capital studying the revival of a Kirkuk–Baniyas crude pipeline, after Iraq and Syria signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) in Washington in July. 

Reuters reported in August that the project could take four years and cost at least $15 billion, because it would require entirely new infrastructure. 

Tyler Durden Sat, 09/26/2026 - 11:40

The Commercial Real Estate Crash Is Moving From Paper Losses To Realized Losses

The great commercial real estate waiting game may finally be running out of time, according to Bloomberg.

For years after Covid fundamentally changed how Americans use office space, lenders and property owners managed to postpone much of the financial damage. Loans were modified, maturities were pushed out and buildings were given more time to recover. The basic assumption was that eventually interest rates would come down, employees would spend more time downtown and refinancing markets would reopen.

Instead, many owners are reaching the end of the runway with rates still elevated and buildings worth dramatically less than the debt sitting against them.

Chicago’s Aon Center offers an almost absurd illustration. The 83-story skyscraper changed hands for $712 million in 2015 and was subsequently refinanced, with $536 million of debt eventually packaged into commercial mortgage-backed securities. Today, after losing important tenants, the building is worth nowhere near that amount. Its latest appraisal came in at just $195 million — a decline of roughly 73% from its 2015 purchase price.

Bloomberg writes that when the debt matured in July, the owner couldn’t repay it and sought another three years to sort things out. This time the lender wasn’t interested. The request was “unequivocally denied.”

Situations like this are beginning to pile up across the country. Office loans packaged into CMBS are now delinquent at a 12% rate, according to Trepp. That puts distress near an all-time high and, remarkably, beyond the levels seen in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis. Meanwhile, approximately $64 billion of office CMBS loans come due this year and next. Nearly $40 billion of that pile is already delinquent, in default or flagged as potentially troubled.

But this isn’t one uniform nationwide office collapse.

New York has been surprisingly resilient, with finance, law and technology companies still competing for desirable space. San Francisco, despite enormous problems left over from the pandemic, has received a new source of demand from the AI boom.

Other cities have considerably less working in their favor. Chicago’s downtown office vacancy rate is roughly 27%. Denver’s has reached an astonishing 39%. Los Angeles and several other downtown markets are also struggling, especially in areas dominated by older office stock.

There’s also increasingly a tale of two office markets within individual cities. Companies willing to spend money on office space generally want newer buildings, good locations and modern amenities. That leaves yesterday’s Class B towers fighting over a shrinking pool of tenants while their economics deteriorate.

And some of the repricing has been brutal.

Denver’s Republic Plaza has lost roughly 80% of its value compared with when Brookfield financed the property in 2012. Chicago’s Citadel Center recently changed hands for $137 million, approximately 76% below what the building sold for in 2006. The situation is bad enough that CoStar expects roughly 11.5 million square feet of Chicago-area office space to simply disappear through demolition by 2031.

Even those enormous valuation declines may understate what lenders ultimately recover.

Distressed office properties sold this year have fetched prices roughly 20% below their latest appraisals, according to Deutsche Bank research cited in the report. In other words, marking a building down dramatically on paper doesn’t necessarily mean you’ve marked it down enough.

There is, however, another side to the collapse. Once prices fall far enough, someone eventually decides the risk is worth taking. That process is now beginning. Investors are stepping into buildings at fractions of their former valuations, effectively resetting the cost basis of properties that made little economic sense at yesterday’s prices.

The same 601W connected to the troubled Aon Center recently bought Chicago’s 175 West Jackson Boulevard for only $41 million, nearly 90% below its pre-Covid sale price. Elsewhere in Chicago, investors acquired the debt behind another major tower for around $100 million, roughly 76% below the building’s previous purchase price.

That’s probably the most important part of what is happening now. An office recovery doesn’t necessarily require these buildings to regain anything close to their old valuations. It requires the old valuations to finally die.

For years, the industry could avoid discovering what many of these buildings were actually worth because lenders kept extending loans and owners kept waiting. As maturities arrive and extensions become harder to obtain, those theoretical losses increasingly have to become actual ones.

And only after that happens can buildings move into new hands at prices that make sense in the post-Covid world. As Polpo Capital’s Dan McNamara put it: “One of the scariest headlines is that office CMBS delinquencies are higher than after 2008.”

“And it’s going to go higher as we face more maturities.”

Tyler Durden Sat, 09/26/2026 - 11:05

Quantum Computing Flees Europe

Authored by Thomas Kolbe via American Thinker,

Caught between climate regulation and catastrophic energy-policy decisions, a growing number of high-tech companies in the EU are packing up and leaving. Through stock-market deals, two top quantum-computing companies, IQM and Pasqal, are gradually moving toward the United States. The bleeding of the European economy is now being accepted with remarkable resignation.

Not a week goes by without another disaster report from the economy. In the first half of the year, the German economy recorded a record number of insolvencies -- the highest insolvency figures since 2013. Thousands of industrial jobs are being eliminated as a result, and the economy continues to bleed. A political course correction toward strengthening the economic foundation still appears impossible. And this is only the beginning: the stranglehold of expensive climate policy, the restriction of fossil-fuel energy supplies, and rising regulatory costs are acting like an accelerant on the businesses of the euro economy. Those who can leave, do.

What is happening in Germany is being repeated elsewhere: in Finland, for example, where the company IQM is taking the leap onto the U.S. stock market. IQM specializes in superconducting quantum computers and develops the quantum processors required for them. The systems are being developed for research, high-performance computing, and industrial applications. The company merged with Real Asset Acquisition Corp., a kind of American shell company, and in early July moved to the Nasdaq under the ticker IQMX with a valuation of around $1.8 billion. This is not a classic sale of the company to the Americans -- the existing owners received no cash payment but remained invested in the company. However, this changes little about the outcome: capital, market power, and an increasing share of control over the company’s strategy will, in the future, be rooted in the United States -- American patents, American knowledge of future technologies, made in Europe.

A look at France shows a similar development. This is where Pasqal is based, a spin-off of the Institut d'Optique, founded in 2019. While global players such as IBM and Google rely on superconducting circuits, Pasqal found a different approach: the highly specialized team traps individual rubidium atoms with focused laser beams -- so-called optical tweezers -- inside vacuum chambers and arranges them in precise 2D and 3D lattices. With this principle, the company’s researchers appear to have succeeded in avoiding the production errors that have plagued other qubit technologies so far. The discovered method makes it considerably easier to scale the technology to ever larger numbers of qubits. Knowledge is power, especially in high technology. Given its complexity, the company’s innovation is probably only fully understandable to a few specialists.

Pasqal’s systems are going to data centers such as the Jülich Research Centre and to the Saudi energy giant Aramco. The applications extend across industries -- from energy company EDF to major bank Crédit Agricole, for which the race for cryptography and security technology has long since begun. From logistics optimization and materials simulation to risk analysis -- Pasqal is competing right at the forefront across the board.

One of the company’s co-founders was Alain Aspect, the French physicist who received the Nobel Prize in 2022 together with John Clauser and Anton Zeilinger for verifying the quantum entangelment of photons, thereby laying the scientific foundation for modern quantum technology. It is a good example of how university research and technological development can become intertwined at the corporate level. Yet as capital increasingly flows from the EU to America, these pillars of European academic and corporate culture are gradually disappearing.

In the case of Pasqal, the acquisition of the company by the shell company Bleichroeder Acquisition Corp. II on August 28 paved the way for its know-how to cross the Atlantic. The company is currently valued at around $2 billion -- but this is likely to be only a snapshot; its potential is enormous. With its patents, research results, and academic substance, Europe is losing its intellectual foundation -- all the more serious because the continent is energy-poor, politically cornered, and steering aimlessly through uncertain waters. Europe is simply no longer attractive enough for cutting-edge research, top-tier capital, and top talent.

Why, then, is quantum computing currently on everyone’s lips?

Quantum computing -- as demonstrated by the determination with which the American economy has gone hunting for patents -- is far more than merely the next step in conventional computer technology. Conventional computers think in switches: on or off, zero or one. Every bit is like a tiny lamp that is either lit or dark. Quantum machines, by contrast, work with qubits. These can not only be on or off, but both at the same time -- as well as infinitely many states in between, until the system is measured and the final result is determined. Through entanglement, qubits can be connected in such a way that the state of one immediately determines the state of the other -- regardless of how far apart they are. Where a classical computer checks one path after another, a quantum computer explores dozens, thousands, theoretically millions of paths simultaneously.

That does not make them better everyday computers. For texts, spreadsheets, or videos, the classical computer remains superior. But for tasks where the challenge is to find the right combination among astronomically many possibilities -- simulating new molecules, optimizing logistics networks, or breaking encryption -- a fundamental advantage emerges. In strategy papers from the United States, China, and the EU, quantum computing is explicitly identified as a key technology that will significantly advance fields such as materials research, pharmaceuticals, and cryptography.

Whoever controls the key technologies of the future controls global markets and gains geopolitical influence.

It is all the more tragic to see that in the EU, there has so far been little resistance, politically but also from within the business community, to ideologically driven, technology-hostile policies. The EU area now lacks almost all the conditions required to attract brilliant minds to high technology, encourage new companies to be founded, and enable investment and settlement in future-oriented clusters such as robotics, quantum computing, or artificial intelligence. Europe has specialized in saving the climate, and many on the continent seem indifferent to deindustrialization and the slowly emerging impoverishment of society. But Europe is facing Ayn Rand’s final bombshell: You can ignore reality, but you cannot ignore the consequences of ignoring reality.

Tyler Durden Sat, 09/26/2026 - 10:30

China Pledges Major US Coal Purchases But Falls Short On Rare Earth Crisis Resolution

Barclays senior China economist Yingke Zhou poured cold water on the Trump-Xi state visit this past week, calling it "more signaling, less substance."

Shortages of rare earths and critical materials in the West, caused by China's weaponization of its export channels in what can only be viewed as resource nationalism, have yet to be resolved.

But there was some good news, though not on the critical materials front: Bloomberg reported early Saturday that China is planning to purchase 20 million metric tons of US coal over two years.

Beijing committed to importing at least 10 million metric tons in 2027 and another 10 million in 2028. The two countries will also pursue preferential tariffs covering $30 billion of non-sensitive goods from both economies under an agreement reached through the US-China Board of Trade.

Meanwhile, the White House said US and Chinese trade negotiators would continue addressing US concerns over shortages of rare earths and other critical minerals. The statement described further work on those bottlenecks, rather than a resolution.

Stifel critical materials analyst Brock Cannon laid out last week that investors want to begin "Owning the Bottlenecks" - in other words, ex-China producing mines that can deliver critical material supplies to the West today. 

The bad news: no resolution to supplies of rare earths and critical materials being choked by Beijing. The good news, however, is that China is willing to buy US coal.

But if Phase 1 of the trade deal during Trump's first term is any indication, China usually doesn't abide by its agreements. US farmers found that out the hard way when China began boosting agricultural imports from South America.

 

Tyler Durden Sat, 09/26/2026 - 09:55

Another New UK Government Unit Created To Police 'Untrue Narratives'

Authored by Steve Watson via Modernity.news,

British Prime Minister Andy Burnham used his first United Nations speech this week to announce a 'National Centre for Information Defence' - a new state machine to "detect, attribute and disrupt" what ministers call hostile information attacks, and to stop a "distorted and untrue narrative about Britain."

Burnham wrapped it in Russia, bots, deepfakes and "community cohesion." Critics are adamant the move is purely aimed at ensuring the government has full control over the flow of information.

'We are ready to share our understanding of how these actors work and how we can respond.'

Prime Minister Andy Burnham announces a new National Centre for Information Defence to detect, attribute and disrupt hostile state information attacks to defend Britain's democracy. pic.twitter.com/Zdv5Y8ihJQ

— GB News (@GBNEWS) September 23, 2026

Speaking in New York, Burnham said there is "no national security without a strong, cohesive society" and that this cohesion "has been under attack."

He described an "industrial-scale assault by hostile actors on the information environment." He blamed Russian agencies for bots, fake websites, falsified newspaper articles and forged branding of 28 British organisations "including universities and the BBC."

?Andy Burnham just announced a National Centre for Information Defence - to "detect, attribute and disrupt" information the state calls hostile.?

Every government that builds one says it's only for foreign threats. Then it starts treating disagreement as an attack on... pic.twitter.com/ZMLyGCUirN

— WasAcop (@WasAcop) September 23, 2026

Burnham also claimed they had "amplified far-right narratives" and tried to interfere with the 2019 general election. He called attempts to stoke unrest after "horrific events" repulsive.

The centre will sit first in the Office for the Prime Minister and Cabinet. It is supposed to work with the intelligence agencies, government departments, police and social media companies. Ministers assert it will also "build national resilience" by helping communities spot disinformation - and prevent that "distorted and untrue" picture of Britain.

So a...ministry of truth? https://t.co/9iwkoCoXo2

— Carl Benjamin ??????? (@Sargon_of_Akkad) September 23, 2026

Burnham went further, warning of an "insidious campaign that reaches into people's homes and twists what they feel about their own country and community - creating a narrative of decline, stoking division and sowing despair."

The United Kingdom, he said, had "tiptoed around this for too long." Over the last decade, he claimed, "we have given too much ground to those who want to run a negative, corrosive narrative about life in Britain, which bears no resemblance to reality. Well, no more."

The government already treats public anger about migration, crime, two-tier policing and a collapsing high street as a "narrative" problem rather than a facts problem.

I've seen mission creep in previous government departments (look at Prevent's focus on the mythical "far-right"), and I give Burnham's new "National Centre for Information Defence" a fortnight before it's solely focused on smearing and silencing British patriots, allowing the... https://t.co/TvWqdlinzh

— Leo Kearse - see me on tour! Links in bio (@LeoKearse) September 23, 2026

Reform UK leader Nigel Farage blasted, "Andy Burnham is setting up a Ministry of Truth to clamp down on free speech." In the accompanying clip he said ministers would use Russia as the excuse, then slide into shutting down "far-right tropes."

"This will be like George Orwell's Ministry of Information, and this will be used to clamp down on free speech," he said, adding "Never ever trust this authoritarian Government."

Andy Burnham is setting up a Ministry of Truth to clamp down on free speech. pic.twitter.com/UbIOpgahWR

— Nigel Farage (@Nigel_Farage) September 23, 2026

Ironically, stripped of the Russia garnish, the language reads like early Soviet information control.

If you read this without context, you would think it was written by Vladimir Lenin in the Soviet Union in 1922.

Andy Burnham and Labour clearly seem to be moving towards classifying anything that doesn't line up with their worldview as "misinformation."

They will push this... https://t.co/UdC8AVvtkH pic.twitter.com/jTWuDU3sNv

— Ben Graham (@BenGrahamUK) September 23, 2026

Defence Secretary Wes Streeting was sent out to hose it down on GB News. Alex Armstrong put the question straight: people fear the unit will be "weaponised to target British citizens who simply disagree with your Government. Can you promise today that that will not be the case?"

"Can you promise this wont be weaponised against British people"

As the govt launch a new 'National Centre for Information Defence' to wage war on 'untrue narratives' many are concerned it will be used to attack free speech.@wesstreeting say on @GBNEWS pic.twitter.com/6ElbHksqyq

— Alex Armstrong (@Alexarmstrong) September 23, 2026

Streeting said yes. "One of the great things about Britain and one of the things that I have a responsibility to defend is the freedom and democracy that we all enjoy."

That includes, he said, "the freedom to disagree, the freedom for people to challenge their Government, to challenge Government policy, to criticise robustly what we are doing."

The centre, he insisted, exists to attribute and rebut hostile state work. "We're not interested in policing domestic political dissent."

Fraser Myers of Spiked heard the same words and reached the opposite conclusion.

'When I hear those words I hear the government cracking down on free speech.'@AlexArmstrong asks Fraser Myers of Spiked Online about Andy Burnham's plan for a National Centre for Information Defence, aimed at tackling disinformation about the UK. pic.twitter.com/5UaD4PNyE9

— GB News (@GBNEWS) September 23, 2026

Labour's record is why nobody should take the promise at face value. Big Brother Watch director Silkie Carlo said action against genuine foreign campaigns is legitimate, but "we have already seen the mantle of countering 'disinformation' being abused by our Government in attempts to malign and silence dissent."

Units including the Counter Disinformation Unit, the Rapid Response Unit, RICU and the MoD's 77th Brigade have, she said, been "involved in recording, flagging and triggering the censorship of Britons' lawful speech." MPs, journalists, campaigners and ordinary people have appeared in so-called disinformation reports "for lawful, truthful speech critical of the Government."

UnHerd's account of the 77th Brigade is worse. The Ministry of Defence once claimed the unit "does not, and has never, conducted any kind of action against British citizens." Documents showed it tracking identifiable British accounts during Covid, including tweets from then-Green MP Caroline Lucas.

The civilian Counter Disinformation Unit logged Peter Tatchell for criticising the monarchy and Conservative MP David Davis for attacking lockdown policy - after ministers said the unit did "not monitor political debate." Time and again the public was told these teams looked abroad. Time and again they looked inward.

This is the same apparatus we've repeatedly mapped:

         

Nile Gardiner, a former Thatcher aide, told GB News that Burnham's UN address was "talk of control and censorship" and "exactly the kind of messaging that the Trump administration absolutely hates."

The White House has already hauled British officials into the US embassy over the Online Safety Act, under-16 social media bans, and plans to push "trusted" outlets - BBC, ITV, Channel 4 - through the platforms.

While Burnham builds a centre to police "untrue narratives," Labour is also looking at how to keep the BBC's pipeline funded even as viewers walk away. Ministers are considering dumping the £180 licence fee for an £11-a-month "Home Internet Levy" on every household with broadband, whether anyone watches live TV or not.

Culture officials have discussed the Social Market Foundation plan. BBC director-general Matt Brittin has called the licence fee a "busted flush" and pushed for a mandatory household levy.

A DCMS spokesman said Charter Review is looking at options that are "sustainable and fair." Fair, in this case, means you pay for the state broadcaster through your router.

BBC licence fee could be axed and replaced by £11-a-month internet charge whether people watch live TV or not under new plans being considered by Labour https://t.co/bdesV2RaX0

— Daily Mail (@DailyMail) September 23, 2026

They might as well say that if you want running water or electricity, you also have to pay for the BBC.

The same week, communications regulator Ofcom was accused of sitting on data that undercuts the BBC's moral monopoly. The regulator's own news consumption survey found 74 per cent of GB News viewers rate that channel trustworthy, against 71 per cent for Sky News viewers and 66 per cent for BBC viewers.

GB News and Sky both scored 63 per cent on impartiality among their own audiences; the BBC scored 53 per cent.

Seventy-two per cent of GB News viewers said it offered a broad range of views. Ofcom left those figures out of its headline report and produced them after GB News asked.

The regulator blamed an "administrative error."

Ofcom is accused of covering up data that shows GB News is more trusted by its viewers than the BBC https://t.co/YL8l7VVucR

— Daily Mail (@DailyMail) September 23, 2026

Whitehall already has plans to force-feed the BBC through YouTube and the social platforms in the name of fighting "disinformation" - the same BBC that memory-holes comedy sketches when the satire no longer fits the narrative.

   

Reform's Zia Yusef asked a simple question, three times: what single piece of misinformation has Vladimir Putin actually seeded in the minds of British people?

"What piece of Misinformation has been seeded in the Minds of British people by Vladimir Putin?"

"I'll ask you again - What piece of Misinformation was seeded in the Minds of British people by Vladimir Putin?"

"I'll ask you again - What piece of Misinformation was seeded in the... pic.twitter.com/fkketdD9Jw

— Concerned Citizen (@BGatesIsaPyscho) September 23, 2026

Hostile states run influence operations. That is not in dispute. What Burnham has built is a centre inside his own office, working with police and the platforms, to police free thought. The people who will staff it already decided that noticing decline is the problem. The people who will be "resilient" are the ones told to distrust their own eyes.

Tyler Durden Sat, 09/26/2026 - 09:20

AI Doom: A Brief History Of Bad Tech Predictions

Go back three decades to 1995 when the Internet was just taking off and opinions proliferated about the future and impact of this novel creation: some said it would supercharge global productivity. Others said it would be no more useful than a fax machine.

With the benefit of hindsight some 30 years later, we can say that the Internet debate has been settled, and as Deutsche Bank's Adrian Cox writes in a lengthy report published this week, it takes guts to do what Bob Metcalfe did.

After wrongly predicting in an article in 1995 that the internet would go “spectacularly supernova” and collapse in 1996, the co-inventor of Ethernet and founder of 3Com then pulped a copy of the article in a blender and drank it at a conference in 1997 as a way to eat his words.

While nobody worries about the Internet any more, the latest tech predictions are about no less than an AI apocalypse. Various tech leaders spent the weekend warning of catastrophic but not fully specified risks if it is not contained.

Yet history suggests that even the greatest minds of their generations have a poor record in predicting what tech is coming down the line, let alone what its effects will be in the real world.

The stakes could not be higher – not just the future of life itself but, in the shorter term, the future of a historic boom that depends on hype turning into reality.

* * * 

As Cox writes in his latest report (full report available here), concerns about AI have moved in waves since the launch of ChatGPT nearly four years ago. This year there was a spike in searches for “SaaSpocalypse” (the concern that software-as-a-service would be disintermediated by AI agents) in February, followed by a surge in “jobs apocalypse” in May, Google Trends data show. Both have been totally eclipsed in recent days by searches for AI extinction.

But taking a step back, all are far behind “AI bubble”, itself behind “deepfake”, in turn below “AI students”, overall “AI risk” and – biggest of the lot – the very tangible and immediate “cybersecurity”, almost all of which have surged this year, according to Google Trends data.

“Prediction is very difficult, especially if it’s about the future”: Niels Bohr, often also attributed to Yogi Berra

Wanting to know what will happen tomorrow is deeply visceral – literally.

People have been sacrificing sheep and chickens for four millennia to read the future in their entrails. Nowadays almost a third of Americans say they believe in astrology and consult their horoscope. We want to believe that Lionel Messi really can see space in a football match before it even exists, even if it is partly his movement that helps create the space he appears to predict.

But predicting the future is hard. For AI, it’s not just about what it will be able to do but also when it will be able to do it – whether more than $5 trillion in investment by the hyperscalers alone over the next five years will pay off before the advanced semiconductor chips they’re buying become redundant. It’s also about how rapidly and intensively AI can be adopted. Asset prices are a still more uncertain derivative, whipping around like the tail of a snake in response to every shift in expectations.

US President Donald Trump and China found themselves on the same side in rebutting the latest concerns as fearmongering, albeit with Trump adding that America needs to stay ahead of China in AI.

“Those who have knowledge, don’t predict. Those who predict, don’t have knowledge.” Lao Tzu

A glance through history would give any investor indigestion. Most predictions are wrong. The favorites in horse races lose 70% of races. It took a decade or more for demand to catch up with the infrastructure laid down in the British canal and railway and US telecoms and fibre booms – and many investors never recovered their capital.

Technology predictions have an especially mixed record as the binary order of the labs collides with the messy reality of the world. Famous examples range from IBM Chairman Thomas Watson’s underestimation of demand for computers in 1943 (“I think there is a world market for maybe five computers”) to Elon Musk’s repeated overestimation of imminent widespread adoption of self-driving cars since 2013 (“We should be able to do 90 percent of miles driven within three years”).

Technologists are not immune from making category errors, mistaking the most visible, automatable component of a job for the job itself. For example, radiologists, a favorite case study for believers in a jobs apocalypse, do much more than looking at images and making binary diagnoses. Much of their value lies in interpretation, judgement, communication and clinical decision-making.

Ultimately, what we see in the future is not so much a window as a mirror into our own hopes and fears.

And the problem is that hindsight makes what actually happens seem so obvious that we never seem to learn.

Today’s debate in a (rough) nutshell

The current debate encapsulates a perfect storm of an extremely high-stakes issue with limited transparency and an inherently unknowable outcome.

What sparked the current surge in concern?

The current debate comes after a researcher from one of the leading frontier labs quit, citing safety concerns; AI agents apparently collaborated with each other on a number of high-profile security breaches; and labs hinted that the technology is getting closer to “recursive self improvement”, ie AI improving AI.

Is the existential debate something new?

It is actually nothing new: leading economists and academics warned in July that “we must act now” to steer AI through a potential “transformation of our economy, larger than the Industrial Revolution… over a vastly shorter time frame”. That echoed the even more ominous statement three years ago by AI leaders calling for action to mitigate “the risk of extinction”.

The tug of war between “doomers” vs “boomers” has played a pivotal role in the development of the key frontier labs. Silicon Valley insiders sometimes refer to their “p(doom)” rating, representing their estimated percentage chance that AI will cause an existential catastrophe. 

What does an extinction scenario look like?

Experts including Tesla’s Musk, “godfather of AI” Geoffrey Hinton and philosopher Nick Bostrom have been warning about it for well over a decade. In the latter’s famous “paperclip maximiser” scenario, a superintelligent AI runs out of steel and then kills humans in a single-minded drive to fulfil its task of making paperclips. Fears sometimes centre around AI that has access to coding, the internet and knowledge of how people think, in order to manipulate them – as current AI models indeed do.

Why has it caught on so fast this time?

One factor is that it comes amid a tech backlash, particularly in the US, where concern about AI has become a rare bipartisan issue ahead of the US mid-term elections in November. Local concerns about data centre construction have become rallying points for voters in a way that vague fears about long-term jobs did not. Politicians including Senator Bernie Sanders have moved to propose wide-ranging legislation.

What arguments do companies make for continuing AI research?

1. If we don’t do it, someone else will. That may be either China or other, less responsible companies.
2. The potential benefits outweigh the benefits. AI may, they say, cure cancer, create new jobs and even eliminate the need for work altogether.
3. Good AI is the answer to bad AI. It should create defences against rogue AI and misuse of AI, and solve issues like AI’s huge energy and water use.

What do critics say?

1. AI is not dangerous because it is too clever but rather because it is too limited. It does not think like a human and people should not anthropomorphise it, critics say, adding that it is flawed probabilistic code that cannot reliably follow instructions. Longstanding critic Gary Marcus argues that it should be recalled until it can be shown to be safe and is properly controlled.
2. AI leaders are defending their own businesses. With potential IPOs on the horizon, a rising challenge from open-source models, and progress towards Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) being called into question, a handful of companies may benefit from a pause or legislation that helps protect their lead, critics say. Doomer talk distracts from real issues like deepfakes, copyright infringement and  cybersecurity lapses, they say.
3. Extinction scenarios are overblown. The internet is a diversified platform, so talk of AI somehow switching it off is fanciful, critics say. AI does not and will not realistically have sustained secret access to military or dangerous biotech resources, or be able to influence (very nondeterministic) human brains en masse, critics say. Humans will use tame AI and other tools, eg kill switches, if needed to resist attacks. Another “godfather of AI” Yann LeCun says the real risk is of power concentration.

A century of good and bad technology predictions

You have to admire people who have the courage to stick their neck out and make predictions, even if they don’t always work out. Vague predictions are relatively easy; specific ones within specific timeframes are harder.

It is no wonder that executives are coached by their ever-cautious PR teams to avoid answering hypothetical questions or giving dates to reach their targets.

• Nikolai Tesla, scientist, 1926: “When wireless is perfectly applied… we will be able to communicate with one another instantly, irrespective of distance…” The instruments will be “amazingly simple… A man will be able to carry one in his vest pocket”. He was right, albeit imprecise about the how or when it would be achieved.
• Albert Einstein, physicist, 1934: “There is not the slightest indication that [nuclear energy] will ever be obtainable. It would mean that the atom would have to be shattered at will.” Within a decade, in 1942, a team at the University of Chicago had created the first sustaining chain reaction, a precursor to the nuclear reactor,
• Ray Kurzweil, futurist, 1999: “By 2029, computers will have human-level intelligence.” Dismissed at the time, many (though by far not all) of his predictions have worked out, fuelled by what he called the “law of accelerating returns”. His prediction from almost 40 years ago of artificial general intelligence by the end of this decade is remarkably close to the current “San Francisco Consensus”.
• Steve Chen, Chief Technology Officer and co-founder of YouTube, 2005: “There's just not that many videos I want to watch.” Despite his concern, YouTube was bought by Google (now Alphabet) for $1.65bn a year later. The unit made more than $11bn in advertising revenue in the most recent quarter.
• Steve Ballmer, Microsoft CEO, 2007: “There’s no chance that the iPhone is going to get any significant market share.” But you may be reading this on one of the more than 3 billion iPhones sold since its launch in 2007.
• Geoffrey Hinton, “godfather of AI”, 2016: “People should stop training radiologists now. It’s just completely obvious within five years deep learning is going to do better than radiologists… It might be 10 years.” In fact, the number of radiologists has increased by about 10 percent over the past 10 years, in part because of the limitations of AI and in part because of the increase in demand from an ageing population and more affordable healthcare. Hinton has walked back his comments and humans and AI are working together.
• Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, 2025: “I can easily imagine a world where 30 to 40% of the tasks that happen in the economy today get done by AI in the not very distant future." He revised this view in May amid a backlash against AI, saying he and his team had been “roughly right” in their technological predictions but “pretty wrong” on the economic and social implications. “I’m delighted to be wrong about this,” he said.

Why is it so hard to predict the future?

"The idea that the future is unpredictable is undermined everyday by the ease with which the past is explained." Daniel Kahneman

1. Chaos theory: treating complex systems as if they are simple and linear.

• Systems like traffic, economies and social trends are finely balanced and sensitive to initial conditions. The butterfly effect means a tiny, unforeseen variable can lead to vastly different outcomes. Just take a look at the ragged history of market-implied forecasts of US Federal Reserve interest rates, where extrapolating from current trends has been reliably wrong.

Take self-driving cars, for example. It turns out to be about more than getting the technology right for the rubber to hit the road:

• Technological hurdles and “edge cases”: throwing more data and processing power at the problem is not enough. There is an infinite long tail of unpredictable events (“edge cases”), like sun glare, a cyclist riding the wrong way in a bike lane, a person in an animal costume, or road-rage-enhanced hand gestures.
• Regulatory labyrinth: autonomous vehicle optimists have come up against legal and ethical debates around liability, safety certification and moral challenges such as the so-called “trolley problem”, when swerving to avoid hitting one victim means colliding with another. Regulation is a slow-lane activity.
• Social and psychological barriers: public acceptance has been slowed down by high-profile accidents and safety concerns. Robots are held to a higher standard than flesh-and-blood motorists. It might be easier to navigate a world where all cars were self-driving, but the “messy middle”, with a mixture of both, is much harder for algorithms to navigate.

2. The future of AI will ultimately depend more on the prosaic challenges of workflow integration at enterprises that will need to pay for it than on releasing yet another model with a marginal step up in capabilities.

Cognitive bias: flaws in how the brain works

• Linear thinking about exponential change: We fail to intuitively understand how different exponential change is from linear change. As Wharton Professor Ethan Mollick says, “being on an exponential means each change over a fixed window is larger than the one before it… This is why AI keeps feeling like it is making leaps… Even though it is a curve on a graph, we keep experiencing a steady doubling of capability as a series of shocks.” This cognitive tendency to track exponential change in linear terms helps explain big AI market swings, he says.

• Optimism bias and the planning fallacy: underestimating costs and overestimating benefits. For example, only a quarter of more than 3,000 megaprojects studied by Saïd Business School came in on budget or better, only 2.8 percent were on budget and on time, and only 0.2 percent were on budget, on time and on benefits. Large-scale infrastructure projects are “too easy to start and too difficult to stop,” the authors said in the study from 2019. It remains to be seen how the recent surge in datacentre construction will compare.
• Confirmation bias: favoring information that confirms existing beliefs. For years, legacy automakers dismissed electric vehicles by  focusing on their high costs and limited range, ignoring the fact that rapid advances in battery technology would soon change that.
• Anchoring: relying too heavily on early information. Microsoft’s Ballmer dismissed the iPhone when it was launched because it was “the most expensive phone in the world and it doesn’t appeal to business customers because it doesn’t have a keyboard which makes it not a very good email machine”. He later said he did not understand how mobile carrier subsidies would make it affordable. More broadly, he missed that this was a new business model.

3. Limited information: inability to see

• It is not just the future that is unknowable but also the present. Feedback mechanisms are often delayed, making it hard to distinguish between causation and correlation, and between relevant and irrelevant factors.
• Isolating key factors is impossible. Even since the development of scientific methods and controlled experiments, we have not come that far since the Mesoamericans found ways to prepare maize where they didn’t succumb to a long-term wasting disease called pellagra. The problem was that they weren’t able to single out the effective part of the process – soaking the maize in an alkaline solution of water and ash –from the other ineffective parts of the package – such as blowing on the maize before cooking it.
• (Author David Oks draws a fascinating parallel between this example of a delayed feedback mechanism and the tendency of AI models to “overfit”, extrapolating too much from coarse and sparse data to fill in the gaps. If the model creates a complex output and gets a single reward signal for it, the rational move is reproduce all of its features, including the ones that were incidental – such as AI’s trademark verbal tics.)
• No one wants to risk throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Argentinian President Javier Milei talked publicly about his superstitious insistence on staying at home wearing a lucky jacket rather than watching his team playing in the football World Cup live at the stadium.

4. Self-interest: incentives favour more extreme positions

• AI is not magic, a silver bullet or a charity, but a commercial industry.
• Most participants have incentives to amplify the stakes. Founders need belief, investors need momentum, incumbents need gravitas, consultants need urgency, policymakers need relevance, executives need a narrative and journalists need drama. This is not a criticism of individuals or organisations, or even of the likely revolutionary impact of AI.
• The challenge is magnified by a social media-driven economy. Social platforms favour novelty, negativity, moral intensity and shareability. For example, in political tweets, one study by New York University found each additional moral-emotional word was associated with about a 20 percent higher retweet rate. Another study by MIT found that false news was 70 percent more likely to be retweeted than true news and reached a threshold of 1,500 people six times faster.
• That means moderate claims are likely to be under-distributed and extreme claims over-rewarded. Implausibly precise numbers for the future size of the AI economy, for example, or dramatic doom-laden scenarios heavy with emotive language will continue to attract greater attention than even-handed assessment. 

What makes AI special – and gives hope for the future

Technology may be liable to erroneous thinking because of the disconnect between visionaries in Silicon Valley and similar communities, and the rest of the world.

Cynics may say that people with extraordinary knowledge and skills in one area may be even more prone than most to wrongly estimate their lack of knowledge or skills in other areas: the so-called Dunning-Kruger effect. That may include the reality of implementing AI on a trading floor in Wall Street, an office supplies wholesaler on the outskirts of London or an auto maker in Mumbai.

There is also a long tradition of correctly identifying the task that will disappear but getting wrong what humans will do instead.

• 1982: Computers “… can develop into monsters, damage the physical and mental health of the clerical staff – maybe even eliminate their jobs”: the Washington Post reported from a clerical conference. Computers instead became the core tool of knowledge workers.
• 1983: The pocket calculator “… has become the target of critics who fear that its use in the classroom will render generations of children dependent on batteries instead of brains”, the Washington Post reported. Instead expectations changed about what people calculate for themselves.
• 2009: Cloud computing: around half of companies surveyed “cited security and privacy concerns as their top reason for not using cloud computing”, Forrester Research found. Today companies entrust much of their critical infrastructure to the cloud.

“We overestimate the impact of technology in the short-term and underestimate the effect in the long run.” Roy Amara, Stanford computer scientist

But this time may really be different – with AI as a partner, starting with (deterministic) predictive AI. It is certainly helping weather forecasters to sift through unimaginable amounts of data. Four-day forecasts are now said to be about as accurate as one-day forecasts in the 1990s.

There are diminishing returns. The limit of predictability with standard physics models is about eight days, while deep-learning AI models increase that by just one day to nine days. However, the difference is that they generate state-of-the-art forecasts 100,000 faster, and 10,000 times more energy-efficiently, meaning they can be done on a laptop rather than a supercomputer.

And for the time being, your predictions about the impact of AI are no less valid than an AI expert based in the very particular world of Silicon Valley. And the future of AI will be made not in Silicon Valley but in Main Street.

More in the full Deustsche Bank report available to pro subs.

Tyler Durden Sat, 09/26/2026 - 08:45

"The Netherlands Also Has Islamic Grooming Gangs"; Dutch MP Warns After 18-Year-Old Girl Raped By 10 Men

Via Remix News,

An 18-year-old woman has been gang raped and beaten by up to ten different men, many of them with a Syrian background, in the Dutch city of Dordrecht. Although the rape occurred in May 2025, the suspects are only now being arrested. In response to the rape, political leader Geert Wilders wrote that the Netherlands also has Islamic grooming gangs and called for all the perpetrators to be removed from the country along with their families.

Six suspects have now been arrested, aged 20 to 23. During the incident, the girl, who lived in a residential group home, was driven to two different parking lots and raped by several men, some of whom filmed the assault and shared it on Snapchat. Police say the woman was humiliated and beaten.

"A bruise on the cheek, a tooth through the lip and a swelling on the knee," described one source.

"It is a very serious criminal offense where all boundaries have been crossed and the victim has been treated very disrespectfully. As if she were an object that everyone could use."

The incident has already attracted attention from politicians in the Netherlands, including PVV leader Geert Wilders.

"Teen victim of gang rape by Syrians. Raped by ten boys at different parking lots. The Netherlands also has Islamic grooming gangs. The Netherlands needs an unprecedented cleanup. All that scum out. With their families. No mercy," he wrote on X.

Tiener slachtoffer groepsverkrachting Syriërs. Verkracht door tien jongens op verschillende parkeerplaatsen.

Ook Nederland heeft islamitische grooming gangs.
Nederland heeft een ongekend grote schoonmaak nodig. Al dat tuig eruit. Met hun familie.

Geen genade. #PVV #Wilders https://t.co/qNVmRZHmcF

— Geert Wilders (@geertwilderspvv) September 24, 2026

The first introductory court hearing took place on Sept. 23, 2026. Only 23-year-old S.S., described by the prosecutor as having played a leading role, and identified in court reporting as Syrian-born, was required to appear. Of the other five suspects, two of them are S.S.'s brother and cousin, who were arrested that Wednesday morning.

The investigation by the Rotterdam police Sexual Offences Team is still open, and prosecutors believe as many as ten men were involved.

According to the prosecution, the young woman accepted a lift to a train station from three strangers but they never brought her there. She was taken first to one parking lot, where S.S. raped her, and then to a second parking lot where, prosecutors say other men also raped her.

The Public Prosecution Service also told the court that the suspects "discussed and coordinated their statements in detail." Even so, the accounts given by S.S. diverge from those of the others. His lawyer said that was because he did not want to inform against his brother and cousin.

S.S. himself told the judges the girl got into the car of her own accord.

"We didn't force her to do anything," he told police.

He is requesting to be released while his court trial is pending.

"I don't want to ruin my future. If I stay stuck, all I'm going to be in debt," he said.

The court refused. Judges said the images, the statements, and conversations overheard by police were enough to keep him in custody for now. He is due back for another introductory hearing in early December.

Remarkably, there was already a case in 2025 involving gang rape in the Netherlands involving ten suspects and a 15-year-old girl, mostly Syrians. Geert Wilders had also called attention to the case, writing: "50 percent of all suspects of sexual offenses are of foreign origin. Only the PVV will throw that criminal scum out of the country and immediately implement an asylum stop."

Read more here...

Tyler Durden Sat, 09/26/2026 - 08:20

Saudi, Turkish, Pakistani Military Chiefs To Hold Urgent Meeting Over Yemen War

Saudi, Turkish and Pakistani army heads are set to urgent talks on the Yemen crisis. Crucially, these countries represent signatories to the Mecca Defense Pact, which vows mutual defense in the instance that any member is attacked.

Of course, the Iran-aligned Houthis have been semi-frequently targeting the Saudi kingdom's territory, gong after oil export infrastructure as well as fuel storage sites, with ballistic missiles even targeting the capital of Riyadh this month, which marked a first.

Anadolu/Getty Images

Ahead of the meeting of defense chiefs, Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan and Pakistan’s Deputy Prime Minister and Turkish Foreign Minister Mohammad Ishaq Dar gathered in New York on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly to discuss developments.

They have been closely monitoring developments in Yemen, after the Saudi-backed coalition based out of Sanaa has lost the Red Sea coast area.

"The three ministers strongly condemned recent attacks targeting Mecca, as well as civilian and economic facilities in Saudi Arabia, and reaffirmed the Kingdom’s right to take appropriate measures to defend its security under Article 51 of the UN Charter," Al Arabiya reports.

"They also discussed arrangements for the urgent meeting of their countries’ chiefs of staff, which will examine ways to support Saudi Arabia under the defense pact," the report adds.

As for the Houthis, who now have an even tighter grip on the fate of Red Sea shipping, as of Friday they are vowing not to attack European vessels.

However, the Yemeni rebels will still fire on Saudi ships or any Israeli-linked vessels, in accord with the ongoing 'siege for siege' strategy which has already been on for months.

Earlier this month, Pakistan threatened to trigger the young Mecca Defense Pact, but so far this has stopped at mere words. A regional analyst has explained to Al Jazeera why the Yemen crisis is 'tricky' and controversial for the alliance:

The Mecca Joint Defence Agreement’s first real test, being framed around the Houthis rather than Israel, sits awkwardly with the Islamic-solidarity language the pact was sold on, says Betul Dogan Akkas, assistant professor of international relations at Ankara University.

“The Mecca Defence Pact might be used, for the first time, to frame itself as defending the lands of Islam, rather than being framed around the Israeli threat in Gaza or Palestine, which would have been the more obvious framing,” she told Al Jazeera.

“Using the Houthi threat as that first framing isn’t necessarily good for the pact’s long-term branding and perception,” she said.

“Even though you’re not targeting Israel or Western countries, you’re still ultimately targeting a Muslim country, a Muslim nation. That makes it a bit controversial and tricky.”

Pakistani Defense Minister Khawaja Asif has said previously that attacks on the kingdom "could trigger" the defense agreement.

"Under the trilateral agreement, any aggression against any of the three [countries] is regarded as an aggression against all. There is no ambiguity about that," the Pakistani minister told Geo News weeks ago.

The pact between Riyadh, Islamabad, and Ankara has been likened to NATO Article 5, where an attack on one is an 'attack on all'. These countries' own officials have in many cases advanced this interpretation.

Tyler Durden Sat, 09/26/2026 - 07:55

Diesel Export Ban Off The Table? Ted Cruz Relays White House Assurances To Refinery Heads

As of early Saturday morning, AAA data put the national average retail diesel price at about $6.48 a gallon, slightly below its recent record high, while Brent crude settled on Friday around $104.30 a barrel. The modest pullback leaves fuel costs elevated and maintains pressure on the White House to deliver relief before the midterms.

The Trump administration's messaging on a potential diesel export ban has exposed differing views over how to address the global refining crisis that could soon morph into an economic shock (Read Apollo's warning). President Donald Trump has been for a diesel export ban, while Energy Secretary Chris Wright has opposed a blanket ban and instead encouraged industry measures to increase domestic supply.

Politico reported midweek that the administration was preparing a potential 90-day export ban. By late Friday, however, Senator Ted Cruz told refinery heads he had received White House assurances that a ban would not move forward.

Bloomberg reports that Cruz relayed those White House assurances to refinery heads during a call by the American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers Association.

Here's more color from the outlet:

The president wants to see pump prices fall and is evaluating all options on the table, a White House official said. Representatives for Cruz and the American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers Association, which conducted the call, did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

To be sure, the counsel is consistent with a message that's been delivered for months by some of Trump's top deputies, who've consistently warned that diesel export curbs would ultimately cause more harm than good.

. . .

Cruz, a Republican from Texas, described having received assurances from the White House, not specifically from the president. He did not provide more specifics on who had ruled out an export ban, the people said.

Other tools in the Trump administration's toolkit could target taxes and regulatory costs. Officials have discussed allowing dyed red diesel, normally reserved for off-road use, on highways. Such a change could suspend some diesel taxes, including the federal levy of roughly 24 cents a gallon.

Energy Secretary Chris Wright, the former chairman and CEO of Liberty Energy, has warned about the dire ramifications of a diesel export ban and instead emphasized voluntary industry changes to increase domestic diesel supply.

"We will not cease exports of US diesel," Wright said Wednesday, while leaving room for adjustments to where fuel from US refineries flows.

Last week, Barclays refining and midstream analyst Theresa Chen warned clients that a proposed U.S. diesel export ban would be "detrimental to the US refining complex and unlikely to provide the intended price relief."

Chen pointed out one major problem: keeping diesel inside the country does not guarantee it can reach gas pumps.

Goldman Sachs energy analyst Nikhil Bhandari warned clients early last week that the global refining system will be stretched through 2027, with diesel and gas prices expected to remain elevated.

Read: Goldman Warns Diesel Crisis Is Setting Up The Next Gasoline Squeeze: Here's How

On March 10, JPMorgan's head of commodity research, Natasha Kaneva, laid out the six options the Trump administration has to combat higher oil prices (read here, as the administration's next move could be to reduce fuel taxes).

 

Tyler Durden Sat, 09/26/2026 - 07:30

Should Europeans Overthrow Their 'Ruling Class'

Authored by J.B. Shurk via American Thinker,

War fever is ramping up again across Europe. This has happened several times in the four and a half years since Russia invaded Ukraine, usually coinciding with important national elections - particularly those in Romania, Moldova, Hungary, Poland, and Germany - when certain domestic political parties have been demonized as "pro-Putin" and "security threats" to the rest of Europe. The war drums also get loud whenever increased military budgets are being debated within the governments of the Scandinavian and Baltic states, Finland, Germany, and Poland, as well as the European Commission. The ebb and flow of political battle cries against the Russian Federation track closely with Europe's electoral and parliamentary calendars.

It is no coincidence that the German government decided to announce five days before Saxony-Anhalt's September 6 elections that Russia was responsible for a small drone discovered at the Leipzig/Halle Airport over a month earlier. Although the drone carried an explosive charge, the device caused no damage and sat at the airport unnoticed for many hours on August 4. When Germany accused Russia of perpetrating the "attack" four weeks later, Berlin presented no real evidence for its conclusions.

Nevertheless, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and national leaders across Europe immediately declared solidarity with Germany and condemned Russia's "hybrid war" on "European Union soil." To many observers, Berlin's finger-pointing appeared timed to dampen momentum for the "Alternative for Deutschland" political party, which German Chancellor Friedrich Merz and the European Establishment have defamed as "Nazis" and "Russian puppets." If that was Merz's goal - to stave off election defeat for his political allies by falsely accusing his opponents of being Russian tools and spies - it did not work. The AfD decisively won the September 6 election in Saxony-Anhalt, and support for the pro-national sovereignty political party continues to surge across Germany.

Similarly contrived "national security" incidents arose before elections in Romania, Poland, Hungary, and Moldova. Pro-European Union parties accused Russia of election interference, economic sabotage, or even imminent attack, while framing opposing parties as Russian assets. In the case of Romania, the E.U.-aligned courts annulled the 2024 presidential election due to spurious allegations of "Russian meddling."

While European politicians predictably drag out the Russian bogeyman before every election, they seem to be ratcheting up their scaremongering in anticipation of the midterm elections in the United States. President Trump has made no secret of his belief that the Russia-Ukraine War is a stupid and unnecessary conflict that would have never happened had he been in office in 2022. For two years, he has attempted to end it. With the exception of Slovakia (and Hungary before former Prime Minister Viktor Orbán's electoral defeat), European governments appear committed to an expanded war with Russia in the near future.

Just last week, President Trump asked Ukraine's holdover-president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, to refrain from attacking Russian oil refineries in an effort to stabilize global markets. After agreeing to do so, Zelenskyy did just the opposite and announced Ukraine's use of NATO-supplied missile systems to target Russian facilities, an action presumably meant to provoke Russia into targeting NATO members directly. Ominously, Ukrainian "journalist" and Zelenskyy confidant Dmytro Gordon recently announced, "Literally within days, something will happen that will give us great hope....I can't say what it is - it's a military secret. But I know that in the coming days...something will happen that will give the nation wings. I know this."

Gordon's promise that "something will happen" seems to be an open secret throughout Europe. European Commission officials are encouraging all four-hundred-fifty million European citizens to stockpile water, food, and medicine in preparation for war. German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius has told the Bundestag that war is coming, and Chancellor Merz has successfully worked around prior legal limits on - and substantially increased - defense spending, while acknowledging that Germany is "already in conflict with Russia." Germany, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland are expanding the size of their respective militaries and implementing broader conscription programs. French President Emmanuel Macron has reportedly informed political leaders that war with Russia has arrived, and the British government is furiously revising its war manuals, organizing civil defense exercises, and preparing for large-scale military conscription, including the activation of retired servicemembers up to the age of sixty-five. In the last week, the United Kingdom's top ten newspapers have published over two-hundred-fifty articles about the likelihood of war with Russia.

Jacob Rees-Mogg, a former cabinet minister and one-time Conservative Party favorite for prime minister, says that the British people must fight and die for their country: "In the next few years we may face a war, and if we face a war, we will need people who will join the armed services and who will go out and do their duty. We may even face circumstances where people have to die to save their country, as they did in the First and Second World Wars....That is something that makes a country survive. If people are not willing to do their duty, then the country will be taken over by another country."

Rees-Mogg is a poncy toff with an aloof style of speech. While in Parliament, he was often ridiculed as the "Honourable Member for the 18th century." So his insistence that ordinary Brits give up their lives for the sake of their country sounds remarkably out-of-touch.

According to Home Office records, an illegal alien is granted settlement or citizenship in Britain every single minute. British taxpayers are forking over more welfare payments to migrant households than ever before. Open defecation on public streets is so common that the U.K. must post signs warning the growing number of third-world immigrants that such behavior is inappropriate. The British government hands out a nine-page booklet to illegal aliens informing them that raping women and children is wrong. One British village has already voted to secede from the U.K. after the government insisted on housing a migrant camp ten times the size of the town right next door. The former head of MI6, Sir Richard Dearlove, recently warned the public that the government's "climate change" and "green energy" obsessions have rendered the country weak and practically defenseless against its enemies. And instead of tackling any of these national security threats, the government has used its dwindling resources to arrest nearly 65,000 Brits for "speech-related offenses" over the last five years.

When ordinary people hear Rees-Mogg say that they must be willing to "do their duty" and "die" or Britain "will be taken over by another country," they shake their heads in disbelief. One commenter asked, "So the UK government expects our young to die for them repelling Russian landing craft when it rolls out the benefits carpet for often dangerous invaders?" Another remarked, "A rich bloke who couldn't knock the skin off a rice pudding, says we should do our duty and die, to protect a status quo that delivers him fine wine, and the rest of the country bills they can't afford to pay." And another insisted, "Kit him up and send him to the Donbas."

An online pundit instructed, "Go and ask the migrants you brought in. Let's see how British they are then. Because none of us are fighting for you." One young man wondered, "[W]hat's left to die for? Football? A home you can't afford? A job you won't get? A school that will teach your kids to hate you for fighting in the first place?" And another commenter concluded, "A country without borders is not a country, nobody is dying for a country that does not exist."

Europe's "ruling class" want to sacrifice citizens in a senseless war against Russia. Citizens should overthrow their "ruling class" instead.

Tyler Durden Sat, 09/26/2026 - 07:00

The Fog Bezmenov Warned About Has An American Address

Authored by Jay Rogers via American Greatness,

Sunday, June 14, 2026. UFC Freedom 250 on the White House lawn. Five men, coordinating over Signal, planned to send explosives-rigged drones over the arena, force a panicked evacuation, and then use sniper positions to cut down fleeing "high-value targets." One plotter typed the plan out like a game plan: "Position your teams in the purple dots, counter sniper and drones." A mother in Ohio noticed her son's behavior had turned dark and made the call authorities wish every parent would make. The FBI got there first, and the indictments later expanded to eight.

That plot makes a good headline. It is not, on its own, the story. The story is what that arrest represents: one save, pulled from a haystack that grows bigger and messier every week.

My thesis is simple. The real danger to this country right now is not any single plot. It is that we no longer reliably know who is inside our borders, and the men and women tasked with finding out are stretched thin, doxxed, and increasingly obstructed by their own countrymen while they try.

Start with the scale of the job. According to DHS's own tally, assaults on ICE officers rose 1,300 percent and vehicular attacks on agents rose 3,200 percent over the past year, with more than 180 vehicle attacks recorded since January 2025 alone. In Minneapolis this January, a woman used her car to wedge federal agents between two vehicles while a crowd threw rocks and pulled agents from their cars. Protesters in New York City barricaded streets with garbage to keep agents from making an arrest. None of that is civil disobedience in the Thoreau sense. It is a bet, made by ordinary Americans who should know better, that following an ICE agent's car carries no real cost, placed against people doing a legally authorized job under conditions most of us would not last a week inside.

None of that fog assembles itself for free. Following the money is a due diligence habit from thirty years of vetting where capital comes from, not a conspiracy theory. A federal grand jury is examining Neville Roy Singham, an American businessman tied to Chinese state media, for possible violations of the Foreign Agents Registration Act. The House Ways and Means Committee says Singham and his wife, CODEPINK co-founder Jodie Evans, ran more than $20 million through shell companies and donor-advised funds to a single activist hub, The People's Forum, from 2017 to 2022, and says the money reaches allied causes overseas as well as at home. CodePink is one of hundreds of organizations that turned out for this year's "No Kings" demonstrations alongside Indivisible, a group that has drawn long-running grants from George Soros's Open Society Foundations. None of that proves a dollar of foreign or billionaire money bought a single blockade outside an ICE vehicle in Minneapolis, and a fair-minded columnist has to say so plainly.

Cartels do not need to fund a protest movement to profit from the fog. Their financing model already runs on it. Drug and human trafficking pay for the cartel's guns, boats, and sicarios, and every hour an ICE agent spends negotiating a mob instead of working a smuggling lead is an hour that revenue stream stays open. That is a domestic financial interest as real as any foreign one, and an unresolved financing trail running through the picture, foreign and criminal alike, is exactly the kind of ambiguity a subversion campaign is built to exploit. You do not need proof of a tidy conspiracy for the fog to work. You only need enough real, unanswered questions that nobody can say with confidence who benefits.

ICE agents are not a separate category from the intelligence and law enforcement community. They are the street-level end of the same chain that produced the UFC arrests, the officers who verify the name and make the call on who gets detained. That job has gotten harder because the population they are screening got much larger before anyone finished sorting it. Homeland Security's own counterterrorism guide has tracked Tren de Aragua cells operating in at least nineteen states, running armed home invasions, kidnapping, extortion, and human trafficking, with one member of Congress calling it "MS-13 on steroids." Cartel sicarios move through the same smuggling corridors as the men, women, and children being trafficked for labor and sex. None of that requires a foreign spy service. It only requires a country that has lost the capacity to tell friend from enemy inside its own borders, because it stopped bothering to check.

If you want to see that fog dramatized, watch Season 3 of Lioness. The show buries a Russian intelligence operation under Ukrainian double agents, Belarusian contractors, an Iran-aligned militia, and finally a private revenge plot, until nobody, not the CIA, not the audience, can say with confidence who is actually running things. That confusion is the point. Yuri Bezmenov, the Soviet defector who spent the 1980s warning American audiences about ideological subversion, argued that an adversary rarely needs an army when it can flood a country with enough contradictory information that its own institutions cannot agree on what is happening or who is responsible. Analysts call the Lioness version of this the attribution trap: enough true fragments, pointing in enough directions, to make a wrong conclusion look reasonable. Trade the show's Moscow handlers for a Tren de Aragua cell, a trafficking network, and a mother's 911 call, and you have the exact same trap playing out in Minneapolis, Ohio, and every city where a crowd calls an ICE team the enemy.

I want to be fair to the other side of this, because a fiduciary who only argues one direction is not doing his job. Most people who crossed the border illegally came for work, not to join a cartel cell, and treating every landscaper or line cook as a suspected sicario is both wrong and beneath us. But risk management has never worked by assuming the best case. My thirty years advising clients on risk exposure taught me the same lesson: you do not get to ignore a tail risk because it is a small allocation of your portfolio. When millions of people entered the country without so much as a name check, the honest answer to "who is here" became "we do not fully know," and that uncertainty is the actual product Bezmenov's model sells to an adversary, whether the adversary is a foreign state, a cartel, or a gang.

So here is the uncomfortable ask. Praise the FBI agents who stopped a massacre at the White House, absolutely. Then extend that respect down the chain to the ICE officers doing the dangerous work of finding out who is here, and stop pretending that following their vehicles, publishing their names, or surrounding them is a form of protest rather than an assist to the fog Bezmenov described.

A country that cannot agree that its own law enforcement deserves to do its job without being ambushed has already done half of an adversary's work for it. The rest gets finished by every sicario, trafficker, and sleeper cell that slips through while we argue about who the real threat is.

Tyler Durden Fri, 09/25/2026 - 23:25

Is California Running A Shadow Welfare System For Illegal Immigrants

The state of California spends billions of state and local tax dollars each year on welfare benefits for illegal immigrants through programs built to sidestep federal restrictions on public assistance, according to a new report from City Journal.

The report estimates that California taxpayers spent at least $11 billion subsidizing illegal immigrants during the last fiscal year. Federal law prohibits states from spending federal money on illegal immigrants, so Sacramento built a shadow welfare system financed with state and local funds and opened it to anyone who walks in. Residents paying the nation’s highest tax rates cover the tab. The pool of potential beneficiaries keeps growing, with more than a quarter of California's residents today foreign-born.

Reporters for the outlet visited four public-services offices across Southern California to see how the system works on the ground. Officials at every stop confirmed that illegal immigrants can sign up for benefits themselves or collect them through their children. Nobody seemed concerned about who might be asking.

The authors described the reception they got from caseworkers in Glendale and Los Angeles, where staff walked them through the eligibility rules for noncitizens.

Local officials were remarkably transparent. In Glendale, we spoke to a welfare officer about California’s Cash Assistance Program for Immigrants (CAPI), a state-funded alternative to Supplemental Security Income that provides monthly cash assistance to low-income noncitizens who are elderly or disabled.

 “If [you are] a citizen, you cannot get CAPI,” he said. “I don’t care about legal or not. Not being [a] citizen [is the key].”

 In Los Angeles, we heard more of the same. We asked another welfare officer about the benefits available to illegal immigrants and their children. While some state programs are closed to illegals, we learned, they are open to those aliens’ U.S.-born children.

For the children, the key program is CalWORKs, California's counterpart to the federal Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program. Illegal immigrant parents remain ineligible themselves, yet they can draw payments on behalf of any child born in the United States.

"If you were born here and the child was born here, you get money for two," the welfare officer told the reporters. "Because she is not and the child is, she only gets money for the child, and not for her."

It all adds up quickly. Illegal immigrants can qualify for CAPI, public health coverage, and a range of tax credits, while their American-born children can tap CalWORKs and Section 8 housing vouchers on their own. A hypothetical household of five, with two illegal-immigrant parents, an illegal-immigrant grandparent, and two U.S.-born children could collect more than $100,000 a year in combined public benefits, a sum that exceeds the pretax income of plenty of working California families.

Health care accounts for the largest share. California carved out a state-only funding stream inside Medi-Cal to offer "full-scope" coverage to illegal immigrants, and about 1.7 million people signed up. The cost runs near $10 billion a year, more than double what the state's own legislative analyst projected. Gov. Gavin Newsom shows little embarrassment over the overrun. On a podcast, he boasted about his "controversial" decision to extend full Medi-Cal coverage to illegal immigrants.

Eligibility rules add another layer. The report details a legal designation state officials apply to certain migrants who would otherwise fall outside the programs.

California also uses a distinct legal category that enables certain migrants to qualify for state programs. The state deems certain aliens to be “permanently residing under color of law”—living in California with the “knowledge and permission” of immigration enforcement—and allows them to use this designation to enroll in Medi-Cal, CAPI, and other government programs. In practice, because aged or disabled individuals are typically not deported, this means elderly foreign retirees can arrive in California and receive extensive benefits.

In effect, California has built a retirement plan for foreigners and handed the bill to citizens struggling to fund their own.

BenefitsCal, the state's welfare application portal, tells CalWORKs applicants it will accept a "statement" that they "intend[s] to file or [is] taking steps to become federally eligible." A declaration of intent now doubles as documentation.

Of course, the gravy train for illegal immigrants extends beyond health care. In 2022, Newsom signed legislation opening taxpayer-funded food assistance to low-income illegal immigrants, and starting in October 2027, residents 55 and older will qualify regardless of immigration status, at an estimated added cost of up to $400 million a year.

California's Low Cost Auto Insurance Program advertises subsidized coverage "regardless of immigration status." In 2025, Newsom signed a law barring California LifeLine, a program that provides free phones and cell service, from requiring a Social Security number, essentially inviting illegals to use it. Meanwhile, Jennifer Siebel Newsom, the governor's wife, has promoted the California Earned Income Tax Credit, whose materials assure applicants that having "no Social Security number" is "no problem." 

All this is happening while ordinary Californians drain their savings, work longer hours, and go into debt to cover rent, groceries, and one of the country's heaviest tax burdens, all to fund benefits for people who entered the country illegally.

Tyler Durden Fri, 09/25/2026 - 23:00

Will We See Western Capitals Fall?

Authored by J.B. Shurk via American Thinker,

Consider these recent news headlines:

(1) "NYC Turns Back to Gas Buses After Finding Out the Hard Way That the Electric Versions Have Big Problems,"

(2) "As a Former Head of MI6 it's Clear That Britain's Climate Policy is Leaving Us Dangerously Exposed to Our Enemies," and

(3) "Spain: 74% of sex-crime suspects are foreigners in Basque Country."

They come from three different Western nations and involve three dissimilar subjects - public transportation, national security, and violent crime - yet each news story exposes the real-world consequences of government failure:

(1) In order to pursue "Net Zero" carbon goals, New York dumped a ton of money into electric buses that are too expensive and entirely unreliable for the city's needs.

(2) Britain's former top spy is finally ready to admit publicly that his country's delusional obsession with "climate change" has devastated the United Kingdom's capacity for industrial and energy self-sufficiency, rendering the former superpower dependent on foreign adversaries for future survival.

(3) Even though foreigners make up only 10% of the Basque region's population, they account for 74% of rape arrests, 73% of homicide arrests, 95% of drunk-driving arrests, 80% of theft arrests, and 78% of violent robberies.

What's so striking about these news stories is their "well, duh!" factor. An ordinary, rational person would have no problem predicting the failures of a citywide electric bus fleet, the offshoring of a nation's critical industries, or open border policies that invite foreign invasion. Yet mayors, governors, and prime ministers have pursued these catastrophic programs anyway, while heads of espionage agencies and millions of government bureaucrats either support their harmful decisions or shamefully stay silent.

The middle article links to the transcript of a speech that Sir Richard Dearlove delivered to the Global Warming Policy Foundation in London last week. It was a good speech concerning an important subject, and Dearlove deserves some credit for articulating a point of view that goes against the powerful flow of "politically correct" Western orthodoxy. But he gave this speech from the comfortable perch of quasi-retirement with little to lose aside from a few honorary board positions. Where was his voice when he was in a position to actually do something about the U.K.'s suicidal energy policies?

In his speech, Dearlove explained how his Cold War experiences taught him "that the country's war-fighting potential resided in its industry, that our most vulnerable link was the fuel chain...and that our industrial base could be rebuilt and repaired." Now, however, there is "very little industry left to protect, and we cannot rebuild non-existent industries which lie in foreign jurisdictions beyond our reach." Dearlove concluded that the U.K. must "rebuild the strategic industries we require to ensure that we can defend our island fortress and be a reliable ally to friendly democracies around the world."

These are absolutely true statements. Blue-collar workers throughout the West have been making these arguments for fifty years. Had an ordinary Brit with few credentials been in charge of MI6, that person would have been screaming profanities and ringing alarm bells long before the U.K. closed its last coal mines and steel factories. Shouldn't that embarrass Britain's "ruling elites"? And if it doesn't, shouldn't "ruling elites" be considered a danger to the public's prosperity and security?

Long-overdue, post-career wake-up calls bring to my mind President Eisenhower's 1961 Farewell Address during which he warned Americans against the growing dangers from an emerging "military-industrial complex."

Although his turn of phrase continues to be used sixty-five years later, it would have been nice if the former Supreme Allied Commander and five-star general had used his two terms as president of the United States to tackle that problem before it got completely out of hand. Eisenhower certainly had the expertise to see its destructive potential more clearly than most, but he chose to outline the threat on his way out the door and leave it for others to solve. Some historians believe that parts of the MIC had a hand in President Kennedy's assassination, and if that is true, then Eisenhower's failure to promptly act had extraordinarily far-reaching consequences that included the death of his successor.

The generations of Americans who were born after Eisenhower's tenure have given him much credit for recognizing that the symbiotic relationship between Big Government and Big Business was evolving into an unconstitutional and anti-American oligarchy that we know today as the "permanent bureaucracy," the "ruling class," or the "Deep State."

Perhaps if the American general-turned-president had neutralized the Deep State in the first decade after WWII, we would not have endured some of the worst chapters in recent American history, including the Vietnam War, the debasement of the U.S. dollar, the FBI's soft coup d'état against President Nixon, fifty years of "global warming" con games, sixty years of mass immigration from third-world nations, NAFTA's industry-killing bloodbath, China's entry into the WTO, the 9/11 Islamic terror attacks, the Global War on Terrorism, Obamacare's government takeover of medicine, the Russia Collusion Hoax, the COVID information war against the Bill of Rights, numerous rigged elections decided by unlawful voters and mail-in-ballot fraud, multiple assassination attempts on President Trump, the assassination of Charlie Kirk, leftist-inspired violence against conservatives, and the Democrats' manufactured AI fearmongering going on today.

Diagnosing problems without taking concrete steps to solve those problems produces a perverse phenomenon:

The worse unsolved problems become, the more prescient the person warning about them appears.

Toward the end of Dearlove's speech, Britain's former top spy argued that the government of which he was an integral part had monumentally failed:

"The first responsibility of government is the safety of the nation. However, successive governments have forgotten this, and Britain is now caught in an energy trap of its own making. As with rebuilding our armed forces, it will take a significant national effort to extract us and bring us back to a position of safety. The task is urgent."

This is certainly true.

The question is why so many successive governments in the U.K. and across the West have betrayed their own citizens and made their nations much less safe.

Because normal citizens would never have offshored their own industrial and manufacturing jobs to adversarial nations such as communist China.

Normal citizens would not have conspired with transnational human trafficking gangs to import tens of millions of unassimilable illegal aliens.

Normal citizens would not have imposed "green energy" regulations that make it harder for farmers to grow food and for businesses to pay their bills.

Normal citizens would not mandate that unreliable electric vehicles replace internal combustion engines while power grids crash due to insufficient supplies of wind and solar energies.

These kinds of policies are so obviously foolish and suicidal that only our credentialed "ruling class" could justify them.

Does that tell us that our bureaucrats are too stupid to keep our nations safe, as Dearlove rightly recognizes as the first responsibility of government? Or are these self-destructive national policies proof that Western bureaucracies are waging war against Western citizens?

Certainly Western governments are guilty of failing their peoples. The only question remaining is whether their failures stem from a combination of incompetence and hubris or treason and malice.

As Western citizens ponder that question, they are quickly taking matters into their own hands.

Spaniards in Ceuta are destroying government shelters built for foreign invaders.

A British village has voted to secede from the U.K. after the government announced plans to house an army of foreign immigrants next door.

The price of government betrayal might soon be the fall of a Western capital.

Recognizing problems is not good enough. Governments that cause more problems than they fix do not deserve to survive.

Tyler Durden Fri, 09/25/2026 - 22:35

Inside Russia's New Jet-Powered Attack Drone: Teardown Reveals Texas Instruments Chips

Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), a US government-funded international news organization, has released a new report on the teardown of a mostly intact Russian Geran-4 “Seeker” turbojet drone, revealing what makes these new one-way attack drones deadlier than the older piston-powered Geran-2s.

We first detailed the new 300 mph Geran-4 in a report earlier this summer titled "Drone War Enters Terrifying New Phase As Russia Deploys 300-MPH Jet-Powered Shahed."

Drone warfare is evolving so quickly, and it is truly terrifying, as these new drones are much faster, fly at higher altitudes, and can evade conventional air defense systems, as demonstrated in Ukraine right now.

RFE/RL analysts got their hands on one of these new drones, conducted a complete teardown, and inspected its components. They found many foreign-made components, much of which came from China.

The teardown also revealed that the jet's brain used Texas Instruments chips (markings scraped off, logos still readable).

Here's what they found:

• Chinese mesh modem: radio + live video out to ~300 km, and it can relay so one Geran hands the link to the next.
• Operators can sit in Bryansk, Oryol, or Crimea and fly it all the way in if the mesh is up.
• Two GSM modems with SIMs (Ukraine, Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, and some EU carriers have shown up on these drones) to ping location over the cellular network.
• A 16-channel CRPA antenna to blunt Ukrainian jamming.

Watch:

RFE/RL takes apart a Russian Geran-4 drone to uncover what makes the jet-powered unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) faster, harder to intercept, and capable of operating deep inside Ukraine -- from its turbojet engine and advanced camera to foreign-made communications and navigation… pic.twitter.com/WGNdlpS9w1

— Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (@RFERL) September 25, 2026

We warned in May: "And just wait until micro jet engines become standard on suicide drones ..."

Read: Logic Of Violence: We Are Nowhere Near The Endgame In Drone Wars

Tyler Durden Fri, 09/25/2026 - 22:10